**Chapter 20 —"The Chain That Broke Heaven's Oath"** (Part 4)
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The air tightened.
Not from pressure
Not from spiritual density
Not from divine presence—
—but from something far worse:
A silence that refused to obey the gods.
The three Middle Gods—Aurelion, Serrath, and Lythra—stood frozen before Vaen.
They had descended expecting a disturbance.
They found an extinction.
Not of life… but of meaning.
Everything around Vaen had lost its narrative.
Time lagged.
Space folded.
Reality waited, confused, unsure which laws it was supposed to follow.
Aurelion—the boldest—forced his voice out.
"Sealed One… identify yourself."
Vaen didn't move.
He didn't blink.
He didn't even acknowledge their existence.
He simply raised his hand
and traced a finger through the air
as if drawing a line on glass.
A thin, silver crack spread outward.
Serrath stumbled back.
"A… a Reality Fracture—!? How!? Only gods can—"
The crack stopped.
Then—
CLICK.
Every oath in the heavens broke.
The three gods jerked back violently as golden chains erupted from their own bodies—halo bindings, oath-runes, promises of divinity that tethered them to the Creator's Law.
Those chains snapped.
One by one.
SNAP
SNAP
SNAP
Each break sent a shockwave through the upper realms.
Each break destroyed a law the gods themselves had written.
Each break carried Vaen's silent will.
Lythra screamed as the surface of her halo cracked like glass.
"A mortal cannot break an oath of heaven! THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!"
Vaen finally looked at her.
One glance.
One emotionless, cold regard.
And Lythra stopped screaming—because the sound was erased from her throat before it could exist.
Aurelion tried to act.
He summoned a spear of divine origin—one forged in the Fireheart of the First Forge—capable of turning mountains into dust.
He hurled it.
A mortal would have been obliterated.
A god would have been gravely wounded.
But Vaen lifted one finger.
Tap.
The spear turned around mid-air
like a loyal dog returning home
and aimed at the heart of its creator.
Aurelion froze.
"You… you reflect divine will—?!"
Vaen tilted his head slightly.
"No," he said softly.
The first word he spoke to the gods in this chapter.
His voice held neither anger nor pride.
Just truth.
"I overwrite it."
The spear surged forward—
but Vaen flicked his wrist, redirecting it.
It grazed Aurelion's cheek, carving a line of golden blood.
Not enough to kill.
Enough to humiliate.
Serrath roared and expanded into his true form—a colossal winged beast made of stormlight.
He dove down—
—and Vaen remained still.
Serrath's talons stopped just a millimeter from Vaen's head.
Not because Serrath held back.
But because something was holding him.
A chain.
A single, thin, black chain wrapped around his throat.
A chain that Vaen hadn't summoned.
A chain that materialized out of nothing—
a law rewritten between one heartbeat and the next.
The gods felt it.
They recognized it.
The Chain of Oaths—a primordial relic that had vanished before the gods were born.
A relic that only one being could wield.
Aurelion fell to his knees.
His voice trembled.
"Impossible… The Chain… was forged by the Origin Himself… before the gods took shape…"
Vaen's eyes lowered to meet his.
Cold.
Silent.
Unmoved.
"Do not speak of what you do not remember."
He gave a light tug on the chain.
Serrath's body slammed into the ground so hard the land itself recoiled, bending and realigning to avoid touching Vaen's shadow.
Lythra stepped back, shaking violently.
"Who… WHO ARE YOU!?"
Vaen answered with three simple, quiet words—
Words that shattered the divine realm's sky the moment they were spoken:
"I am the forgotten."
And the Chain of Oaths pulsed—
—reactivating a piece of history the gods had erased.
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